Dr Biu Sikivou, The New Director of PEI

Following the departure of Dr Jim Stewart, PEI’s second director, near the end of 2015, Dr Biu Sikivou took up this role in August 2015.

Dr Sikivou has been working in the field of ophthalmology for the past 25 years, at the CWM Hospital, in private practice and for the Pacific Eye Institute, a Fred Hollows Foundation initiative.

Dr Sikivou graduated from the then Fiji School of Medicine now known as Fiji National University. Later, she completed the Master of Science in Ophthalmology, and the Post Graduate Diploma in Optometry/Low Vision from the University of Melbourne.

Since 1984 Dr Biu has a long standing record of working within the Ministry of Health in Eye Care and in 2009 she was asked to join the Pacific Eye Institute as the Lead Ophthalmologist for the Diabetes Eye Care Programme. Dr Biu said she was more than happy to take up the role, “not only because of the great need to re-establish a vibrant diabetic retinopathy programme in the central division, which was lacking compared to western and northern divisions, but also because I felt indebted to Fred Hollows NZ (who is an initiation of the Pacific Eye Institute) for contributing so much to my personal learning experience and to eye care in Fiji as a whole”. Dr Biu was also the first chairperson for Vision 2020, an initiative launched in Fiji, 2002 to stop preventable blindness by 2020, adopted from the World Health Organisation.

This is the first time that Pacific Eye Institute has employed a local female as the Director of the institute and we congratulate Dr Biu Sikivou in this new appointment.

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Following the departure of Dr Jim Stewart, PEI’s second director, near the end of 2015, Dr Biu Sikivou took up this role in August 2015.